


A New Challenger Arrives

by Nasicom



Category: Monster Hunter (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nasicom/pseuds/Nasicom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale of monsters and adventure. And hunting monsters. And monsters hunting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Challenger Arrives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [krityan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krityan/gifts).



> Hope this works for you. Happy Yuletide!

A cascade of golden light from the high noon sun reflected across the shimmering metallic visor of the Hunter’s helm. His polished spaulders, chestplate, and leggings matched the helm in material and pristine. The armor clanked and clanged as he strut across the farm toward the bounty of crops that awaited him.

His leather boot sank deep into the soft, fertile soil of the farm. Added depth gained from his weight combined with the weight of the armor equipped to him. He rustled among the crops for a while, picking their fruits and herbs, the berries and the vegetables until there was nothing but stalks left, barren and sticking upright from the earth.

He filled his pack with the essentials, and began back the way he’d came. There was a soft -snap- beneath his feet with the cracking of a stick as he hurried off. Much too busy to worry himself, the Hunter paid no attention to the sound nor the urgent mewing behind him as he jogged away, the clamor of his armor drowning out the protests of the Feyline behind him.

As the Hunter passed by an old tan and gray Feyline, the cat bowed his head respectfully and mewed a goodbye. His dark, wrinkled eyes squinted at the human figure as he ran away from the farm- sun shining off every reflective surface of his armor. When he’d disappeared from view, the Elder’s shoulders sank, and he turned back toward the farm and its crops. With a walking stick in paw he shuffled toward the farm.

A young, burnt orange and white Feyline groaned as he returned to his crops in the field. Row upon row of broken stalks and empty vines, the soil had been ruined- carelessly trodden upon and kicked about. His heart sank when he saw that his favorite hoe had been stepped on, and the handle broken. The striped cat lifted his conical hat from his head, and threw it down in a fit.

“It’s always like this!” he complained loudly, a grumpy mew escaping him, “The Hunters come, plant seeds in our fields, we tend their crop, and then they reap the rewards. While we’re stuck picking up after them!”

The older, darker Feyline shook his head sullenly, “It is Tradition, Edgar.”  
“Elder Ozmo, it isn’t fair. I’m tired of working twice as hard as them, and they walk all over us!”  
“It is simply the way of things. They keep us safe from the monsters, and we provide them food and shelter.”  
“Well not anymore. I’ve decided, I’m going to become a hunter.” Edgar declared, kicking his hat as if to punctuate his resolve.

 

Although Edgar was laughed at every step of the way, he was determined. To become a real Hunter, he would need to hunt a beast, all on his own. It took a large amount of coercing, but Edgar managed to get the town’s smith to make him a set of armor, a sword, and a shield to his size.

When Edgar inspected the armor in the sun, it was polished to a brilliant shine, like the hunter’s before had been. It fit him very snugly. The helm was cut with half-circle domes sticking straight out of the top, with a chain mail mesh on the flat sidel for his ears to slide into. When he wore it, his ears were propped up and alert against his will, but it was a small discomfort to pay for the sake of protection. The only other notable modification was the extra allowance for his tail in the padded pants that went with the suit of armor.

Away he left, forsaking his broken hoe for the hilt of a sword. Edgar left the village quickly, descended the side of a hill, and found his way along a worn pathway. It wound alongside a spring, which ended abruptly in a cascade of water, sprinkling over boulders and crashing at the bottom of a cliff to join a river below. Just beyond the small waterfall, the path met with a rope bridge stretching across the ravine.

Across this, among a new plethora of trees stretching far up into the sky, Edgar heard the low grumbling sounds of what might be his first monster. He eagerly bound across the wooden planks on all fours. His pack bounced wildly at his side and off of his back. When Edgar reached the other mass of land, he continued along the path down another small hill, which opened up into a meadow.

Four of the largest creatures Edgar had ever seen stood before him- one larger than the others by far. They were gray skinned, with black stripes that didn’t quite reach down the whole of their bumpy backs. Off of the top of the creature’s heads were flat bony frills that were shaped similar to an hourglass.

Certainly this is a monster that few dared to face, Edgar thought to himself privately. With a murr and a courageous growl he shouldered his shield, and withdrew the sword from his side sheath. He felt a great rush of pride as he charged forward to the largest of the beasts, and swung his weapon with bravado.

The orangecicle colored feyline’s blade struck the thick, calloused hide of the Aptonoth’s back leg. It bounced back. The rebound caught Edgar off his paws, shaking him to his core. The aptonoth, irritated with the itching sensation in it’s leg, swung its long tail back and down. The tail caught Edgar on the temple, and sent the cat flying in a somewhat defiant-of-the-laws-of-gravity-type manner. When he did hit the ground, there was a clamour of armor and sword.

Surely he was using the wrong weapon for this beast. He’d over heard Hunters talk for ages about the benefits of some weapons over others. If only he’d paid more attention previously- often however Edgar was too busy being furious with the week’s crops being plucked before his very eyes.

Edgar fled, the Aptonoth won, for now. A short trip back to the village, a shopping spree at the market, and a much longer trip back with a cart later, and Edgar was prepared to take on the dangerous gray beast once again. He wiped sweat from his brow, then promptly licked it from the back of his paw, and matted down the hair around his ears before securing his helmet on his head.

The cart was filled to the brim with weapons, specifically made for him. And one by one, he took to arms against the Aptonoth. It glared at him, with beady black eyes, daring him to attack as it casually shewed on the overgrowth in the meadow. It taunted him by earnestly turning away and exposing its leg Edgar had failed to damage earlier.

Edgar squinted his own eyes, reaching behind him and blindly grabbing at the first of the hilts which had tangled amongst themselves in the pile. A clanging of metal, and the hesitation of the weapon caused Edgar to spin around and take the weapon with both paws.. He yanked hard, and almost clubbed himself in the face with the business end of a rather heavy iron hammer. It was lashed onto the stick with thick cords of leather and, even though sized properly for the Feyline, still quite heavy.

He shouldered the weapon, and charged forward- in vain, sadly. He threw the weapon outward in a great arc from his shoulder, but it missed. The follow-through of the weapon dragged Edgar through the air, sending him tumbling ‘tail over teakettle’, as it were. Edgar rolled quite a bit further than the hammer had.

A failure. The first of many more to come, but Edgar pressed on with vigor. He decided to try a logical approach. If one sword had worked before, perhaps two was better. ‘Worked’ wasn’t entirely accurate, perhaps, but it at least had made contact. Edgar climbed into the cart, and dug around in the plethora of weapons until he found the two short, sharp blades.

He brandished them with a wicked grin. They felt good in his paws. Light and easy to wield. For the first time he felt he could do some damage. He raced off of the cart, and returned to the leg. This time he wouldn’t miss. He spun round, slashing and dicing into the tough skin. Paper-cut thin lines appeared on the skin, but did very little actual damage. At the rate he was going, it would be days before he felled the beast. With a blank, disappointed look, Edgar threw down the daggers and wandered back toward his cache.

Not to be discouraged, he picked out another weapon from the cart after returning to it. This time he opted for a great sword. A thick blade, it looked more like a slab of metal that had been sharpened on one side more than a weapon. This, like the hammer, had proven to be a great weight to wield. His logic was fairly straightforward- perhaps a bigger blade could cut the skin better than his previous attempts.

Without the aid of wheels and the cart, moving the heavy blade was time consuming and difficult. He drug it along the ground most of the way toward the Aptonoth, which had only moved ten feet from the cart in the first place. It took what seemed like ages, and incredible effort to get the blade even a few inches off of the ground.

With a grunt, and a twist of his hips, Edgar managed to spin the blade from his side behind him, upward overhead, and downward across a meaty chunk of the Aptonoth’s tail. It roared, reared up and galloped away immediately. Before Edgar even had the chance to unbury the weapon from the dirt in the ground. It charged off, ten feet- then twenty- then forty feet to the other side of the meadow.

Edgar looked down at the great sword, then up to the aptonoth, then down to the blade one last time. He abandoned it there, not even considering dragging the weapon another ten feet, let alone forty. As returned to the cart Edgar’s faith was restored. The sword had drawn blood! Perhaps things were going to look up for him. He just had to find a happy medium between -big-, and -sharp-.

There was another sword- but what caught his eye first was the long collapsed shaft of a lance. He pulled it out from the cart, and it expanded before he’d a chance to hold it properly. Edgar lost his balance, and nearly skewered himself before he’d even gotten to the shield. When the weapon was retrieved and after some careful fiddling, Edgar managed to couch the lance beneath his arm on once side, and hold the long shield in the other.

The monster was still rather far away, plenty of space to gather up speed. Edgar ducked his head down, and spun his legs beneath him. A blur of cat leg and a steady rhythm had him at a full charge in a matter of moments. He barreled toward the aptonoth, making sure to adjust ever so slightly so that he was sure to hit it- ready to thrust the lance upward if the need arised.

When the tip of the lance connected, for a split second Edgar felt he’d finally found the right weapon, until it exploded. The end of the lance made a ‘click’ sound, then a fireball enveloped him and threw Edgar back. Smoke and soot enveloped his tabby-cat colors, and shiny new armor. The resulting bang was still echoing in the trees when the ringing in Edgar’s ears had died down.

The Aptonoth, however, did seem to be injured. It limped back toward the cart, making its way through a clearing in the woods opposite the path he’d come down initially. Excitedly, Edgar hurried to the cart to find the weapon he thought would bring the beast down.

He eliminated the excess options. No more exploding things, he thought. He pulled out the bowguns from the cart immediately. There was an axe- which nearly lopped off his ear as he tried to get it free from the cart and it began to swing itself around into a sword. No good there, either. Finally he was left with only a pawful of weapons when a noise came from above.

A dark red blot moved across the sun in the sky. The shadow cast down darkened the Aptonoth limping past, Edgar, the Cart and beyond. The blur coiled in its descent. The flapping leathery sound of wings growing closer inspired a real horror in Edgar’s gut. When the Rathalos roared, the hot airy sound- the deep and resounding bellow of a dragon, it forced Edgar to hold his paws in front of the ear guards on his helmet.

When the creature finally landed, it did so with such force that the ground quaked and the cart shook apart. One wheel simply came off, and sent Edgar tumbling in a pile of weaponry and farm equipment. He’d landed directly ontop of the Aptonoth, crushing it and killing it immediately. The pray Edgar had worked so hard to champion, killed by this horrendous creature.

Edgar was too terrified to move. Each hair on his furry feyline body stood up. He racked his brain for a solution, a way to get out of the situation. He thought just laying there might be enough, but the ringing of metal behind it had drawn the attention of the Rathalos. And now, shuttering and rattling in a tiny suit of armor, was the Rathalos’s desert.

The wyvern ducked it’s scarred and battleworn head down very low to the ground. It snapped its massive jaw, able to eat Edgar and five of his best friends in a single bite. It stretched out the long, leathery, ragged wings it used to fly to each side. Then, licks of flame pouring from the Rathalos’s jaw in excess, it charged forward with another airy roar.

Edgar panicked. He was certain it was the end of him. Desperately, with claws outstretched, he reached around for anything he could get his paws on. Edgar grabbed hold tight of the first handle he could, and climbed up to stand his oncoming death. As the head of the Rathalos grew closer, Edgar leaped into the air and swung down as hard as he could with whatever weapon he had found.

The hoe plunged deep into the eye of the Rathalos, leaving a deep gash in the brow as it blinded the beast. The Rathalos stumbled, flinging its head upward and throwing Edgar free from it. Edgar held tight to the hoe, however, which made a sickening splorch as it tore free from the eye-socket of the wyvern. Still charging forward with momentum, however- the Rathalos slammed a massive talon against a haphazardly placed hammer- tripped, and impaled itself on a slab of sharpened iron that had been wedged upright into the ground earlier piercing its heart.

The King of the Heavens quivered only twice, before laying completely still. When Edgar came to his senses and saw the Rathalos had been slain, he had trouble believing it at first. He was overwhelmed by emotions, most of which were still tied in with fear. He looked down at the weapon he’d instinctively grasped, the most comfortable of the handle’s he’d touched by far. The most familiar.

Edgar returned to the village. The smith’s fury at the loss of so many custom weapons and armor was nearly as terrifying as the Rathalos he’d met. But when Edgar told the smith that the entire beast was ripe for the picking, just outside the town a ways, and that the spoils were his to claim, the smith smiled a thin and creepy grin, before shaking Edgar’s paw.

At the farm, Edgar took the hoe he’d slain a Rathalos with, and had it hung up in a shed as a trophy of his accomplishments. He never did complain about the hunters treading all over their farm again, and whenever the other Feylines would inquire to his adventures, he would just smile and say

“I had trouble finding a weapon that suited me, until I realized it was here, all along.”


End file.
